Wang to Lee: ‘We are all sinners’

FORGIVENESS:：Commenting on a Control Yuan report questioning his parentage, Lee Teng-hui said he would just pray to God to forgive the authors’ sins and stupidity

By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff reporter

Fri, Apr 12, 2013 - Page 1

Control Yuan President Wang Chien-shien yesterday made a caustic retort to former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) response over a recent spat stemming from a Control Yuan report regarding Lee’s parentage, saying: “We are all sinners,” including Lee.

On Wednesday, when asked about his reaction to a Control Yuan report that quoted an academic as saying that Lee could be the illegitimate child of a Japanese man, Lee said there was no point in getting himself worked up because “Taiwan’s future is more important to me than things like this.”

Lee said he would instead “pray to God to forgive their sins and stupidity.”

Wang said on Tuesday that the Control Yuan report “was like firing a cannon at a bird,” and that “a bad bird deserved it.”

In response to media queries about Lee’s comments on Wednesday, Wang said he found what Lee said about the matter “very useful.”

“Pray for God’s forgiveness for all sinners. All people, including Lee Teng-hui, should think about whether they need to ask for forgiveness. Everyone has sinned, no matter how big or small they are. People who repent of their sins please God,” Wang said.

The report was completed by Control Yuan members Chou Yang-shan (周陽山) and Lee Ping-nan (李炳南) after they conducted an investigation into the preservation of documents related to the 228 Incident in 1947. The incident was an uprising against the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.

Critics of the report accused the Control Yuan of focusing on issues that are not related to its functions, instead of acting as a government watchdog.